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April 15, 2007

#42

In honour of the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's major league debut, a number of players are wearing his #42 today, including every member of the Dodgers, Astros, Cardinals, Brewers, Phillies and Pirates.

Coco Crisp, David Ortiz, and third base coach DeMarlo Hale were set to wear #42, but today's game was postponed.

This is a great idea -- and I commend both Ken Griffey Jr. and Bud Selig for their respective efforts to get it going -- but something has always bothered me when baseball announcers talk about Robinson.

When discussing his career, Robinson is always referred to as having "broken the colour line" in baseball. That's true, but no one truly explains what the colour line was. We are supposed to know about it already -- though if no one talks about it, how will newer fans learn?

No one says how impenetrable the "line" was, the pure hatred that fueled its decades-long existence, how the owners and general managers of every team in baseball banded together and refused to sign any black players. Robinson's debut is presented as antiseptic and, with very few exceptions, absolutely no context is given. Such as how it would be 12 years before every team had at least one black player on its roster; the Red Sox were the last team, in 1959.

(Laura (who also wrote about Robinson today (echoing some of the same thoughts (we've talked about this before)) tells me that Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo mentioned the tribute Friday night. Remy praised Robinson's courage in "doing what he did", but that was apparently as close as he got to telling us what Robinson actually did. Which wasn't close at all.

Why is it avoided? It has to be a conscious decision. Are people simply uncomfortable telling us these facts? It's an ugly history, but it should not be ignored simply because it was ugly and shameful.

Without offering the necessary context, it sounds as though the colour line existed because of lack of talent, not rampant racism. It's as though when Robinson came along in 1947, well, finally, here was a black player good enough to play alongside the whites. As though the major leagues would have had many black players for years, but none of them had had the necessary skills to reach the pinnacle of the sport. This was an excuse offered pre-1947. The commissioner insisted (truthfully) that there was no rule banning blacks, trying to make people believe there wasn't an understanding among all teams to never sign a black player.

I should point out that not all coverage sidesteps the issue. On ESPN's game last Sunday, Jon Miller said straight out that black people had been systematically "excluded" from the major leagues.

It was a time in our country when in many places blacks couldn't stay in the same hotel as whites, eat in the same restaurants, attend the same movie theaters or even drink from the same water fountains in the South. ... There was no rooting in the press box, but many of us in it that day, like Robinson, had served in the Armed Forces and had just helped to defeat Hitler and thought it would be a good idea to defeat Hitlerism at home.

And that's another thing. No one talks about what Robinson went through after April 15, 1947. The death threats, the separate hotels, restaurants, etc. And what about the other National League teams, one of whom (the Cardinals) threatened to go on strike if Robinson remained in uniform? Then there were the slurs from fans. Earlier this week, Coco Crisp said he still hears racist comments when he is on the field.

MLB wants to make today a celebration, though of course it was the institution of MLB that created and nurtured the Jim Crow conditions that prevented so many black players from playing major league ball.

Maybe the coverage today will touch on some of this history. Jon Miller will likely do so again tonight. I'd be curious to know if anyone hears anything.

I thought Boston was always one of the most progressive cities in America.

Um, no. Not in the 20th Century.

What was his name and what was life for him? That must have been a pretty big milestone.

Pumpsie Green. A very nice guy, from what I have read, but not much of a player. I think he was signed more as a show of doing something rather than for his talent. The owner of the Red Sox from about 1930-1976 -- Tom Yawkey -- was quite a racist.

BTW: Jackie Robinson tried out for the Red Sox before playing for the Dodgers. The Sox were not serious, though, it was just a farce.

Legend has it that someone (maybe Yawkey) yelled from the grandstand at one point: "Get those niggers off the field."

Howard Bryant's book "Shut Out" is a great look at Boston and race and baseball.

Sounds like it was just window dressing. Get the worst possible black player and when it doesn't work out, just say, hey we tried.

Loved the DVDs, BTW. I panicked because the first one's audio for some reason did not play on my computer, but it's fine on the DVD player. I don't know what the story is. All other DVDs play fine on my computer.

Which one of the backup singers did he end up marrying? Say from the first one SLN cut (Gotta serve somebody), can you point out to which one? There were four and one of them was a guy, IIRC.

Get the worst possible black player and when it doesn't work out, just say, hey we tried.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Also, I think a lot of teams had one black player, maybe two, for a long time. And at first, they had to be stars. No team would carry a bench player or marginal pitcher who was black. They had to be undeniably great.

...

Dylan had a relationship with a woman who sang with him, but I don't think he married her. Not sure if she was on that tour. I'll email you with I learn.

With baseball, it was more of a Red Sox thing, than a Boston one. Sam Jethroe:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Jethroe

broke in with the Boston Braves in 1950. Also, the first African-American to get regular playing time in the NHL was Willie O'Rea, who broke in with the Bruins in the early '60's. He did some time with the Bruins' top minor league team--the Kington Frontenacs, of the now defunct Eastern Professional Hockey League. Not that either re-writes Boston's racialist past; the busing riots of the late '60's, early '70's attesting to that, in addition to Redsock's excellent sources.

Boston was also the first team with a black head coach, so try not to say we're like Alabama, ok?

As for there being a relative paucity of african americans on MLB rosters, it's a serious issue, but certainly not part of any great plan. It's easier to play pickup football or basketball than a full game of baseball, and so that's at least the given reasoning.

I think if I was a player I wouldn't wear it either after all wasn't it most of my ancestors that kept Jackie out of baseball.

That might be a great reason to wear it. To say, "this ends here".

The amazing fact is that the red sox and yankees only have one african -american on their rosters.

How do you figure? You are only counting American-born players? Because I'm pretty sure David Ortiz would not have been allowed to play pre-Jackie either - too dark. Same for Manny and any other darker-skinned players.

I'm still trying to digest this, but it took Buffy and Tabler 5 innings to figure out that it was Craig Monroe, not Marcus Thames, in left field for the Tigers. Apparently, Thames' name was in the lineup given to them but Monroe was a last minute sub. Both were wearing 42. Monroe batted twice, with camera close-ups of his face, and both times they talked about a key hit that Thames had yesterday. I wonder if 2 white guys of similar build are wearing #42 the same mistake goes 5 innings before it's noticed? When they admitted their error, they blamed it on the lineup card/#42 confusion without further comment.

l-girl said:That might be a great reason to wear it. To say, "this ends here".

What ends here?Lgirl said:How do you figure? You are only counting American-born players? Because I'm pretty sure David Ortiz would not have been allowed to play pre-Jackie either - too dark. Same for Manny and any other darker-skinned players.

The first Cuban played in 1911First Columbian in 1902 The first Dominican in 1956First Mexican in 1933....

I just meant if you were a player, and you felt your ancestors had been part of the bigotry, you could make a statement by wearing #42, as a way of saying, I support equality, I support integration. Kind of like, although my ancestors may have contributed to that system, I do not.

This wasn't a minority thing it was a black thing.

You're right.

But I'm not pretty sure (although not positive) that a man who looked like Papi would not have been welcomed in the Majors. No matter what language he spoke or country he hailed from, he would have been in the Negro Leagues.

Carlos Delgado, for example, although Puerto Rican, would have been thought of as black.

I think this is the case, because they are so dark-skinned. I could be wrong.

"It wasn't my idea, and I'm not the type of person to jump on the bandwagon because someone else is doing something. If I did it just because someone else was doing it, it would seem kind of empty to me."

I can only imagine the uproar of Barry Bonds had said this. (Bonds was the only Giant to wear 42, by the way.)

Here is a picture of Cuban-born pitcher Dolf Luque. He pitched from 1914-1935.

Wikipedia: "As a blue-eyed, fair-skinned, white Cuban, [Luque] was one of several white Cubans to make it in Major League Baseball at a time when non-whites were excluded. Between 1911 and 1929 alone, seventeen Cuban-born Caucasian players played in the Major Leagues."

"On May 28, 1916, Jimmy Claxton temporarily broke the professional baseball color barrier when he played one game for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. Claxton was introduced to the team owner by a part-Indian friend as a fellow member of an Oklahoma tribe. Within a week, a friend of Claxton revealed that he had both African American and Native American ancestors, and was promptly fired."

"Prior to the integration of the major leagues, the Brooklyn Dodgers spearheaded the integration of the minor leagues. Jackie Robinson and John Wright were assigned to Montreal, but also that season Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella became members of the Nashua Dodgers in the class-B New England League. Nashua was the first minor-league team based in the United States to integrate its roster after 1898."

Yeah, about the skin color of players from Latin America pre-Jackie, when Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida were called up from the minors to play for Cincinatti, the front office required them to bring notarized paperwork from the Cuban authorities stating that they were of unmixed white blood. These guys wren't dark skinned at all - they're the first and third guys here.

I just came home from work and put on the ESPN game (it's been taping).

ESPN's Stuart Scott is interviewing Don Newcombe.

Newcombe was the first African-American to win 20 games in the majors, the only player to win the Cy Young, the MVP and ROY awards. He was sometimes spoken of as the possible first black to play in the ML.

He's talking about how he never could have done what Jackie did, about how Jackie's background (college, California) prepared him in a way that his own background in NJ never could have. He's also talking about Martin Luther King Jr coming over his house for dinner!

I'm so glad I've been taping the whole game. Some of the interviews and tributes might be very good.

when Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida were called up from the minors to play for Cincinatti, the front office required them to bring notarized paperwork from the Cuban authorities stating that they were of unmixed white blood.

All evening, I was thinking about something I had found while researching my book (I don't think it is in the book, though).

But I couldn't remember the details. I also thought Luque was involved and couldn't remember what the players had to "prove". I thought fans showed up at the train station to "check them out". (Maybe they did.)

Your info is 100% correct. Plus the Reds were run by the NL president. Just a tad fucked up.

I wonder if I have some xeroxes of articles in The Sporting News about this.

Do you think in 20 years this will still be talked about the way it is today?

I think we always have to talk about history. It's the only way to learn. For me that's the whole point in remembering Robinson and what he (and so many others) went through.

And what Jackie did was phenomal because no one broke his spirit to play the game he loved.

Thats the gift and the memory people should be talking about..

Not the color of his skin....

But we should never forget that it was people's hatred of the colour of his skin - and nothing else - that put him in that situation.

L-girl - If me and my wife were there with you that day at the airport....My wife would have slapped that bitch for you......

Thank you! :)

You are very kind, but really, I wasn't hurt by that. People like that are too stupid to be hurt by - and she doesn't know me, nothing she can spew is going to touch me in any real way. It was just so friggin annoying!!!